Conspiracy group’s voter enrolment advice way off the mark
What was claimed |
The verdict |
Victorian voters could change residential address any time before November 9 to vote in a different electorate for the state election on November 26. |
False. Voters must have lived for at least one month at their enrolled residential address. |
By Eiddwen Jeffery
Anti-lockdown and COVID-19 conspiracy group, Reignite Democracy Australia (RDA), has claimed Victorian voters could change their enrolled address in a bid to vote out the Victorian Premier, Dan Andrews, in the upcoming state election.
The claim, reshared on social media, is false and has since been rejected as such by the Australian (AEC) and Victorian Electoral Commission (VEC).
The claim, published on October 18 on RDA’s Telegram channel, has been viewed 8,000 times. In the post, the RDA suggests voters can move to Mr Andrews’ electorate of Mulgrave prior to enrolment closing on November 8 in order to “vote against Dan Andrews”.
But this is incorrect. The post encouraging voters to move address was published 21 days before voter registrations closed. A voter’s enrolment address must be the address they have lived at for a minimum of one month, according to the Australian Electoral Commission.
Any move made in this time period would not be a valid residential address in time for the election, meaning the voter would be unable to vote in the new electorate on election day.
The claim was drawn to the attention of the election supervisors, the AEC and VEC, by a Twitter user who published a screenshot of the RDA post querying if it was true.
In response the AEC published a tweet stating a voter’s enrolled address must be the address at which they have lived for at least one month.
“We regularly data match with licence authorities, Centrelink and the ATO because the integrity of the electoral roll is vital. Enrolment fraud is a crime that we take seriously,” the AEC wrote.
The VEC also responded to the tweet stating it is an “offence under the Electoral Act for someone to enrol at an address that is not their principal place of residence” and that doing so would be supplying the VEC with “false and misleading information”.
According to the VEC's Update My Enrolment page, if a voter changed address and did not update details before the roll closed, the voter must vote in the electorate in which they were previously enrolled.
The AEC and VEC have an agreement to jointly maintain the electoral rolls, as explained on the VEC webpage Sorting Fact from Fiction.
Reignite Democracy Australia is an anti-mask, anti-lockdown and COVID-19 conspiracy group and has previously been reported for spreading misinformation (here and here).
The verdictThe claim that Victorian voters could change their address before November 9 in order to vote in another electorate is false. Voters must have lived at their residential address for at least a month and registered it prior to enrolment closing.
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